toxins Review The Incidence of Marine Toxins and the Associated Seafood Poisoning Episodes in the African Countries of the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea Isidro José Tamele 1,2,3 , Marisa Silva 1,4 and Vitor Vasconcelos 1,4,* 1 CIIMAR/CIMAR—Interdisciplinary Center of Marine and Environmental Research, University of Porto, Terminal de Cruzeiros do Porto, Avenida General Norton de Matos, 4450-238 Matosinhos, Portugal;
[email protected] (I.J.T.);
[email protected] (M.S.) 2 Institute of Biomedical Science Abel Salazar, University of Porto, R. Jorge de Viterbo Ferreira 228, 4050-313 Porto, Portugal 3 Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Sciences, Eduardo Mondlane University, Av. Julius Nyerere, n 3453, Campus Principal, Maputo 257, Mozambique 4 Department of Biology, Faculty of Sciences, University of Porto, Rua do Campo Alegre, 4619-007 Porto, Portugal * Correspondence:
[email protected]; Tel.: +35-122-340-1817; Fax: +35-122-339-0608 Received: 27 November 2018; Accepted: 10 January 2019; Published: 21 January 2019 Abstract: The occurrence of Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) and bacteria can be one of the great threats to public health due to their ability to produce marine toxins (MTs). The most reported MTs include paralytic shellfish toxins (PSTs), amnesic shellfish toxins (ASTs), diarrheic shellfish toxins (DSTs), cyclic imines (CIs), ciguatoxins (CTXs), azaspiracids (AZTs), palytoxin (PlTXs), tetrodotoxins (TTXs) and their analogs, some of them leading to fatal outcomes. MTs have been reported in several marine organisms causing human poisoning incidents since these organisms constitute the food basis of coastal human populations. In African countries of the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea, to date, only South Africa has a specific monitoring program for MTs and some other countries count only with respect to centers of seafood poisoning control.